


Said You'd Lend Me Anything

by kikitheslayer



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Fix-It, Post-Season/Series 04, but currently this is 100 percent bonafide canon compliant, i mean it will be, what a beautiful world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-30
Updated: 2017-05-30
Packaged: 2018-11-06 09:13:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11033169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kikitheslayer/pseuds/kikitheslayer
Summary: It was stronger than a bus.





	Said You'd Lend Me Anything

It hit Gina like a slap. Or like a bullet. Or like a wave that crashed into her, sending her into icy shock and threatening to tug her into the darkness below.

Whatever it was, it was stronger than a bus.

Gina’s hand flew to Amy’s shoulder without thinking. Her whole heart, which she liked to picture red and beating in a beautifully gilded cage, had been smashed open upon the floor. Its contents seeped away, turning a sickly brown in the open air. Among other things, a love -- loathful, black, and shuddering in the unexpected light -- crept furtively out of the wreckage, and Gina knew there was no hope that it could ever be brought back into captivity.

Gina’s hand found Amy’s. She squeezed.

\--

None of them wanted to be alone. None of them wanted to be anywhere.

Gina took another shot and slammed it back on the coaster with less than the requisite respect for all glassware in Captain Holt’s house, but he didn’t press the issue.

When they had arrived, Gina had immediately taken up residence in his cushiest, most English professor red armchair, and had refused to move. Captain Holt was sitting at the end of a couch next to her, watching with unreadable eyes. She wished idly for someone else to wander in and take up Captain Holt’s attentions, though she knew it was in vain. Charles was sobbing in the half-bath. Amy had been frantically making calls all night. Terry was trying futilely to fill requests that had not been made. Hitchcock and Scully hadn't been allowed inside the Captain’s home for years. Kevin was in the kitchen, busying himself with snacks no one would eat.

“Don’t you think you’ve had enough?” Holt asked. He was leaning forward, his hands clasped between his knees.

Gina glared at him. “I'm drinking sparkling apple juice. So no, I wouldn't say I have.”

Holt sat back up. “Congratulations, by the way.”

Gina licked her lips. “Thanks,” she said. “But The Blue Power Ranger and I aren’t on speaking terms. I personally blame her for all of this, so.”

Holt quirked an eyebrow.

Gina shrugged. “I lost a bet to Jake in the 6th grade. I was hoping he’d forget, but now I think it might be a nice way to honor him, you know?”

Holt nodded. For once, Gina saw how tired he was. He had given an impassioned speech earlier. Now, he was out of words.

“That…” he said, “is a very nice idea,”

“She’ll be okay,” Gina said, with a little sigh. She was looking up at the light fixture, softly dimmed, not at Captain Holt.

“Blue?” he asked.

Gina looked at him and shook her head. “Rosa,” she said.

“Well,” Holt said. “If ever someone could survive, it’s her.” 

Gina didn’t respond.

Captain Holt took a drink of something that wasn’t juice.

After a moment, Gina added, “Her middle name is Machine Gun.”

\--

The next day, Captain Holt called her into his office. He shut the blinds, then stepped around his desk and slid his top drawer open.

“It’s yours,” he said, and he pressed the key into her hand.

Gina took it, smiling, although she had her own.

\--

All of Rosa’s things were neatly packed. Most of it had already been donated or shipped to Argentina, but there were a few boxes neatly labeled and stacked in her walk-in closet. There was one labeled “Gina” in green sharpie. 

Inside, there was no note. There was, however, a jewelry-making kit, a knife with a gorgeous, intricate red leather handle, a shimmering dress Gina had often commented on, and a stack of Gilmore Girls DVDs. 

Gina took the kit and the DVDs and walked to the living room. She threw on something from season two and pulled her feet up onto Rosa’s couch. She recalled evenings she had spent in that apartment months ago, when she had had so much free time.She and Rosa had been inches apart, curled up but not together.

One night, Gina had said, “Rory’s such a bitch.”

Rosa had gotten angry. The good kind, though, the rare kind. She had been laughing.

To soothe her, Gina had said, “I like Paris.”

Rosa had nodded in approval. “Good. She’s crazy.” Then, she had looked right at Gina and smiled. "Just like you.”

Gina had kept her eyes very still on the TV screen. They had started to water a little, from the bright light in the dark room.

Now, Gina pulled her legs up into herself and took up the jewelry kit and started to learn.

That night, she fell asleep on the couch. Later, she would take up residence in the room she still thought of as Rosa’s. She still paid the rent on her old place; she just slept better in Rosa’s sheets.

The walls were bare, a lonely expanse of white. Gina found a knife duct-taped behind the headboard, and ran her hand over it, almost reverently. She looked at it, whenever she needed to, but she did not take it down.

\--

“I am _trying_ to understand.”

Gina looked at Milton and shook her head softly. “This isn’t what you want,” she told him, her voice hollow and tight as a guitar string.

He can understand, she thinks, but she cannot explain.

\--

The precinct had been a whirl of activity since the trial, with every detective and much of the support team occupied. The squad had filled nearly every day with investigations and meetings.

And Gina had helped. A lot. People might even have called her uncharacteristically helpful, had they been paying attention.

But that didn’t change one simple thing.

“She wants to see you,” the Captain told her one afternoon, standing over her desk.

Gina pulled her headphones down around her neck.

“I am going,” she said. Her hand flitted to her belly. “I’ve been busy.”

Captain Holt nodded. “Good.” Still, he lingered by her desk. After a moment, he added, “I can come along, if that would make things easier.”

“I don’t need help,” she snapped, though she admitted to herself that it would make things easier.

\--

Gina slid onto the bench. Rosa was seated across from her, secured at her end of the metal table. Gina swallowed and leaned forward on her elbows. The table was cold, even through the sleeves of her flannel shirt. “I tried to bake you a cake with a file in it,” she said, “but then I found out they don’t let you bring food. What’s up with that?”

Rosa didn’t smile. She just shook her head. “It’s fine.” 

Gina frowned.

Rosa didn’t look bad exactly. At least, not as bad as Jake had looked when Gina had visited him. But there was something cagey in her expression. She hunched over the table. Her hair, which had been cut shorter, in an act that sent pangs through Gina’s heart and made her think of it as the greatest miscarriage of justice yet, hung around her face. Her eyes wandered around the room, surveying the exits, the other women having their own visitations.

“Thanks for coming,” Rosa said. Her voice was gravely.

“Sorry it took me so long,” Gina replied.

They didn’t say anything after that for a long time.

Finally, Gina rose and bought Rosa a bag of chips from the vending machine. As she returned, she said, “You should see Hitchcock and Scully now that we’re all so busy. They have a dangerous amount of power.”

Rosa laughed.

\--

It was 7:00 pm on a Tuesday when Gina, sitting on Rosa’s couch, her jewelry-making kit scattered across the floor in a hurricane of thread and beads, dialed Pimento’s number.

“Fuck off,” she said, as way of greeting.

“Wow,” Pimento answered, “rude. Especially since you called me.”

Gina laid back, throwing her legs over the arm of the couch. “How are your scorpions?”

“Low blow, Linetti. You know I got rid of them.”

“Yeah,” Gina said, laughing, humorlessly. She did know. She had had to listen to the whole damn story from Holt, and maybe it was because it had been in the morning, but it had made her feel like she wanted to throw up.

“You really fucked up on that one,” she said, pushing her hair away from her scalp.

Gina expected Pimento to hang up. Instead, he asked, “What’s up with you, Gina?” He sounded almost concerned. Or excited. Gina did not understand him.

Or maybe she did. Who cared.

“Do I have to spell it out for you?” she asked, and her voice was helplessly shallow. “You should have taken her with you.” Her voice cracked on the “have” and she took a quick breath and hoped he didn’t notice.

If he did, Pimento blew right past it. “I know, right?” he asked. “What was she thinking?”

Gina felt anger well up inside of her, white hot. Suddenly, she only wanted to make Pimento feel something, the way she felt something. “You’re supposed to be in love with her,” she said. “You don’t act like you’re love with her.”

“Are you kidding?” Pimento asked. “I wish she had come, but I wasn’t about to try and stop her once she had made up her mind. You might as well as get into a fist fight with a horse. Which I’ve done, by the way. Huge mistake.”

“Well, fuck that,” Gina said. She paused, just for an instant. “I’m in love with her, too.”

Pimento took a moment to answer. “Huh,” he said. “ _That_ makes sense. It’s awesome, right?”

“What?” Gina asked. “No way. It sucks.”

“Well, yeah,” he said. “That, too.”

Gina cleared her throat. “That’s not the point. I could have made her stay away.”

Pimento laughed. “No, you couldn’t.”

“Probably not.” Gina paused. After a moment, she added, “She doesn’t act like she’s in love with you, either. She never fucking mentions you, you know.”

“I am getting really fed up with this hostility.”

Gina shrugged, though he couldn’t see. The line was quiet for several seconds. “So…” she said finally, “what are you, like… into?”

They started talking about the Harold and Kumar franchise, and that was that.

\--

One day, the silence lasted a little too long.

“What are you even doing here?” Rosa asked. Her voice was flat. Her eyes, glassy. “You don’t have to come sit here and look goddamn heart-broken twice a month, you know. I didn’t ask you to do that.”

Gina stood up. “Fuck you,” she said, with a snarl she hadn’t used in years.

Gina walked toward the prison doors and the wheels in her mind began to turn.

\--

Gina sat in her car for several minutes. She texted Pimento when she had finished processing.

 **Gina, 2:46**  
i’m gonna steal your girl. that chill?

She waited, and he promptly responded.

 **Pimento, 2:46**  
I welcome the challenge!

He added about three emojis. They were all unrelated though, and mostly from the profession section, so there was a chance he just hadn’t figured out how iphones worked. Gina didn’t even try to analyze them.

\--

Hitchcock said he wouldn’t accept less than 10,000 dollars, but Gina gave him a bag of quarters for the vending machine and he forked the jacket over happily.

She shuddered at the Hitchcock smell, masking the scent of the leather, but she shrugged it on all the same. She settled into it. It felt familiar. She thought of a night a months ago; they had been walking from Shaw’s back to their cars, still in the precinct parking lot, and Gina had been doubled-over laughing, her hands holding greedily to the jacket. She had shrugged it on back before they left, having grabbed it off the back of Rosa’s chair. Rosa hadn’t protested, and her eyes had been shiny in the reflection of the streetlights off the white snow. Rosa had rested her hand on Gina’s back as they walked.

\--

The next week, she sat back down in front of Rosa. She had rested her hands palm-down on the metal table. She watched Rosa’s eyes flit over the jacket and felt a little rush of satisfaction. “Thanks for seeing me again,” she said.

For once, Rosa didn’t let her gaze wander around the room. She looked right at Gina, as though she had been dared not to. “I’m sorry about last time,” she said. “I don’t --” Her gaze grew steely, and Gina understood that the person who had dared her had been Rosa herself. “I don’t know what I would do if you didn’t visit me.”

“Good,” said Gina. “So, I have to tell you something.” She took a breath. “I love you. I guess.”

Rosa nodded slowly. “Huh.”

Gina felt a small burst of pride that she didn’t have to specify which type.

Rosa tapped her knuckles on the table and cleared her throat. “Well,” she said. “What you said.”

In that instant, the table felt like a ocean keeping them apart. But neither of them attempted to touch across the table reach across it, to tempt the guards. But in the connection of their smiles, Gina swore she could feel the same spark of electricity.

\--

Gina shot Rosa a hopeful smile from across the courtroom on the day of the appeal. She rested a hand over her stomach. She felt a kick, and tapped a finger affectionately in response. She already knew that Blue “The Engima” Machine Gun Boyle-Linetti-Diaz could sense a good dramatic moment.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Paris" by Kate Nash.


End file.
